Foggy Bottom Neighborhood

Introduction to excerpt #2--theme: The enemy within. Is there something at the stealthy core of our culture—and even our hearts—that militates against our happiness, our ability to love and find fulfillment, and that sabotages relationships? Elated at having finally discerned a possible unifying theme for his coherence-defying assignment, Walter characteristically keeps his own counsel in the matter as he walks from his west D.C. office to the nearest Metro, mulling his insight and his recent breakup with office heartthrob Maggie Syzygy. On the way he unexpectedly meets someone who mysteriously suggests that the two seemingly disparate topics may not be all that disconnected.

From “Chasing Chickens: A Love Story,” copyright 2011, G.M. Corrigan

…

Turning east on M Street, Walter pulled his scarf tighter about his neck and proceeded toward 23^rd Street, northwest and the Foggy Bottom Metro stop—a name given to the low-lying area four blocks south of M Street by the swamp fog originally associated with the spot and now irreverently also applied to the nearby State Department headquarters.

Even this far east of Georgetown proper, the street scene was a sound and light show of sleek cars, blazing chrome, and stone and glass high-rises motile with fleeing, well-dressed thirty-somethings, ceding the city to advance units of yuppie merry-makers eager to revel in the Reagan recovery.

A beguiling cavalcade of human and fabricated exotica, it was a show that nightly intrigued Walter as, with blithely plodding schools of fellow commuters—largely cushioned against economic angst by the budget behemoth that is the federal government—he pressed his way home.

Of particular interest to Walter were the platoons of brisk, tailored women who, with the blank and unflinching expressions of those who have had their fill of men for the day, hurried from hives of political or commercial activity to tony apartments in Virginia or Maryland—or to one of the bustling bars in the downtown area.

There was something in these women's cumbrous, pitching gait and erratically scraping high heels that to Walter pleasantly suggested the female endowment—nurtured and groomed for its wondrous power over men—held only precariously in place beneath dress-for-success primness.

But there was also something troubling about this gaudy gauntlet, this slick steeplechase of stylish but armor-plated career women, bustling businessmen, ribald revelers, colorless civil servants, and demented, semi-politicized street people that made Walter often want to shout it—and what, the isolation and self-delusion that it cloaked?—to a stop.

Pondering this, Walter absent-mindedly crossed M Street and headed down 23^rd toward Washington Circle Park, spotting the huddled shape of the bench-bound derelict only after he entered the sparsely planted memorial-cum-traffic circle to the nation's first president.

At first, Walter considered a course change that would skirt an unwanted encounter with another aggressive panhandler.

But then he saw that the motionless, tarpaulin-clad shape was that of the non-aggressive type—the truly damaged, farouche kind that sought only to be left alone.

Unlike some of his fast-talking, even menacing compatriots, such "leathermen," Walter thought—twigging to the Doctorow short story of that name—projected an aura of mute and authentic suffering.

Such poignancy, however, was sometimes even more unsettling than the outright confrontations of the aggressive panhandlers. 

Heading straight toward the miserable mound, Walter again recalled his project’s petition-propitiation-participation theme and, curiously, the pessimist philosopher Schopenhauer's theory about spontaneous human identification with the sufferings of others.

There’s that communion shtick again, he thought, speeding up, hoping to pass the hobo at a quick clip.

Approaching the bench, however, Walter hazarded a look.

There, motionless and covered in tattered layers of filthy clothing, blankets, and a tarpaulin headdress with two slits to admit air and light, was what presumably was a human being.

For a disturbing moment it appeared to Walter that he was gazing upon someone enveloped in a giant cocoon, preserved, as in the movie "Aliens," by extraterrestrials for some future horror.

On the bench next to the shape—its only entreaty to a world bustling indifferently by—was a used and dirty paper coffee cup, filled a third of the way with pennies, dimes and nickels.

Off to the side was a shopping cart piled high with cardboard boxes—presumably all the hobo's earthly possessions—fastened together with duct tape and Bunjee cords. Hanging from the cart's grillwork were several bulging, plastic People’s drugstore bags and two paint buckets filled with assorted odds and ends—treasures, doubtless, only to the traumatically dispossessed.

At once repelled and fascinated by the comically overloaded cart, Walter had a fleeting urge to ask the leatherman how he navigated the monstrosity through city crowds.

But the pathetically piled pack and its beast of burden associations ultimately deterred Walter, adding to his general reluctance to engage the mummy that sat mutely surveying his passing.

Poor soul, Walter thought, slowing in front of the bench.

Walter wondered what shock—self-induced or otherwise, as in “The Fisher King,” Robin Williams’ movie about homelessness—had driven this mound-man to seek refuge in the siren song of the streets. He also flashed on a scene in O’Cannon’s dog-eared talisman, Atlas Shrugged, which Walter had read to please his editor—and on a poignant passage about a hobo he had memorized because it rung so true:

“He looked like the hulk of an evangelist or a professor of aesthetics who had spent years in contemplation in obscure museums, Walter recalled. She wondered what had destroyed him, what error on the way could bring a man to this.”

In this pondering Walter couldn't help but consider his own relatively trivial professional predicament in light of this man's grievous plight—and in this chance perspective Walter, as with the Magenta incident, felt a strange undertow.   

Stopping, Walter walked over to the bench and soundlessly dropped a five-dollar bill into the leatherman's cup; then he quickly he resumed his purposeful march.

"That's more of a sacrifice than most make," the leatherman reacted in a surprisingly clear and dignified voice. "May the body and blood of the risen Lord sustain you and heal your wounds, young man."

Accustomed to the pietistic—often Tartuffian—formulas of the downtown panhandler cadres, Walter at first paid little attention to the leatherman's remark.

There was, however, something about the man's voice—an eloquence, perhaps even an authoritativeness—that made Walter pause and look back.

And the sage quality of the hobo’s declaration did tweak Walter's interest.

Retracing his steps, Walter, on a lark, decided to test the leatherman’s oracular credentials on another nagging—though nonprofessional—subject currently occupying his thoughts. 

“Why are male-female relationships so difficult these days?” he ventured. “Can you answer that one, bud?”

It at first seemed to Walter that the man had been only momentarily lucid, and had quickly slipped back into an otherwise chronic state of unbalance and mute self-absorption.

But then, with shrouded eyes searching Walter's, the leatherman intoned, “Because we’re all wounded at our cores, complicating the acceptance of love and spawning varieties of protective games.”

He shifted glacially on the bench and added, “And, generally, women are more aware of this than men, making all but the most exceptional of them wary—and especially elusive for suitors clueless about their own wounds.”

“And why are women more aware of this condition than men?” Walter pressed, intrigued.

“Because they feel more deeply than men, and have learned feelings’ secrets, which few men have. And the crassly combative times in which we all live only aggravates this condition, discouraging heartfelt engagement and encouraging all to look for the better deal.

“Chase and feed your heart, young man, not your head—and you will understand. The answers to your questions—and the others you will have—are all around you, and even staring you in the face.”

Then, standing, the leatherman adjusted some items on his teetering cart; seemed to take a parting—and darkly penetrating—look at Walter; and shuffled down the path, pushing his burden ahead.

Stunned, Walter mutely watched—then saw the coffee cup-coffer abandoned on the bench.

"What the...," Walter managed. But the surprisingly nimble man, his urban Ghilly suit trailing tattered streamers, quickly disappeared into the crowd and gathering night.

Leaving the cup where it lay, Walter, mystified but strangely uplifted, resumed his stroll to the Metro stop—a rare, warm breeze stirring fallen leaves into frolicsome sprites about his legs.

And there, with chance thoughts of capering cherubs in Renaissance paintings conducting the chosen to heaven, he boarded his Arlington-bound train.

This night Walter did not stop for a newspaper.